When Matijašošić began working in web development, he was surprised at how difficult it was to build a full stack, production-ready web application.
One of the biggest hurdles facing Shasic was navigating the landscaping of fragmented developments. To code your web applications, you need to utilize a variety of tools to develop front-ends and back-ends, and more.
“The entire ecosystem is very modular and granular,” Sössic told TechCrunch. “There are a lot of these separate subsystems. You need to know how to paste these subsystems together, and you need to make sure they’re scalable and safe with everything you set up.”
In 2020, Shushusic decided to pair with twin brother Martin Shesic, who faced similar problems in his own developer career.
Wasp is a full stack web app DEV tool that acts as an adhesive between the various platforms already used by developers, such as React, Node.js, Prisma. WASP helps you compile your code from these different platforms into one web application.
WASP finds and flags common gaps when developers mash different coding sources. WASPs can, for example, let developers know if an API key is missing or suggest potential code changes to prevent future issues.
That last piece is particularly important in today’s market as numerous new AI coding tools, such as Windsurf (formerly Codeium) and Cursor, allow non-technical people to access coding. That’s mostly good, but Seasic says “vibe coding doesn’t work in the enterprise” and WASP helps budding developers build safer, full-stack web applications.
Wasp’s platform is open source and can be deployed on public clouds or enterprise servers.
Schesic said the founding team decided to build WASP on top of existing tools, as opposed to a completely new, ready-to-use solution to eliminate developers who have to learn a new programming language or process to use WASP.
WASP has passed the 2021 winter cohort of Y Combinators and released its product in beta in 2023. Since then, the company has won 26,000 GitHub stars and is currently working with a number of startups and Fortune 500 customers.
The company raised previously unannounced $3.7 million in late 2024, led by HV Capital, with participation from VCSs such as Fifth Quarter Ventures, Big Bet and Metis Ventures. The round included Ant Wilson, co-founder of Søren Bramer Schmidt.
Wasp raised a $1.5 million seed round in 2021. So far, the company has raised a total of $5.2 million.
“This gives you a very solid amount of freedom, essentially,” Ash said. “We are very excited to run it at the next level of our product and bring it to (version) 1.0, further solidifying the overall positioning of our AI spectrum.”
Schesic said the company is currently focusing on bringing its products to version 1.0. This includes features such as support for various languages and server-side rendering.
“For us, it still focuses on the core product itself, which is an open source WASP and framework,” said šošić. “I think all the feedback we’ve got from the buildings over the past four years has revealed what we have to build and what we have to support to get there (version) 1.0.”